Archive for the ‘Cadillac Sixteen’ tag

Whether sporty, futuristic, or elegant – or sometimes all three – Cadillac’s concept cars through the years have been nothing less than exciting, as one would expect from GM’s flagship brand, and the organizers of the Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance plan to showcase some of the most exciting Cadillac concept cars this March.

Cadillac emerged as a show- and concept-car builder in 1949 during GM’s Transportation Unlimited exhibition, which took place that January at New York City’s Waldorf-Astoria hotel and then later in April in Detroit. At the show, Cadillac exhibited seven cars, four of which were dedicated show cars, including the first Cadillac Coupe de Ville, a car that not only introduced the two-door hardtop bodystyle to Cadillac’s lineup, but also the one-piece curved windshield.

The Transportation Unlimited show eventually morphed into the famed Motoramas in 1953, and Cadillac fielded a number of cars for that initial Motorama, including the first Eldorado – a convertible that would enter limited production – and the Le Mans, a sporty two-door roadster using a fiberglass body, 1954 front-end styling, a 115-inch wheelbase chassis (11 inches shorter than that year’s Series 62) and a 9.0-compression, 331-cu.in. V-8 good for 250 horsepower (40 more than stock). Cadillac actually ended up building four Le Mans roadsters, at least one of which made the rounds in following years, with quad headlamps and subtler tailfins, as seen on the example housed at the GM Heritage Center.

Photo by Daniel Strohl.

Photo by Daniel Strohl.

As the 1950s progressed, however, so did Cadillac show cars’ tailfin heights become more exaggerated. One can see the growth first on the 1956 Eldorado Brougham Town Car, another fiberglass-bodied show car, but one intended to resurrect the formal open-front chauffeured town cars of a few decades prior. Then as tailfins reached their height on Cadillac’s production cars in 1959, so too did they on the show cars, particularly on the XP-74 Cyclone, a bubbletopped steel-bodied two-seater with sliding doors and twin nosecones. More than just decoration, the nosecones supposedly contained radar units that warned the Cyclone’s driver of objects in its path – presumably necessary when jetting around on the high-speed highways of the future.

Photo courtesy RM Auctions.

Amelia Island’s Cadillac concept car display will gather all of the above-mentioned vehicles, plus a 1961 El Dorado Chicago Auto Show car once owned by pro golfer Walter Hagen, the 2002 Cien, and the 2003 Cadillac Sixteen. The concours will take place March 8-10 at the Ritz-Carlton in Amelia Island, Florida. For more information, visit AmeliaConcours.org.

UPDATE (24.January 2013): Amelia Island sent over this nice big photo of the 1949 Cadillac Coupe de Ville concept, along with some details on its history. Apparently it hasn’t been seen in public since its first showing at the Waldorf-Astoria; four years later GM gifted it to its CEO, Charlie Wilson, when he left GM to serve as President Eisenhower’s Secretary of Defense. The only one of four Coupe de Ville prototypes built to survive, it sits on a 133-inch wheelbase, uses a 331-cu.in. overhead-valve V-8 and four-speed automatic transmission, and is equipped with a two-way radio/telephone, power windows, power seats, chrome wheel arches and a three-piece rear window, lipstick holder, perfume atomizer, a back seat secretarial kit and leather seats and trim. Ontario-based collector Steve Plunkett now owns it.

It is a rare occurrence when a person can spend his entire working career with just one company, but when the company is as diverse, wide-reaching and talent-appreciating as General Motors, it can be done. And this was the case for Wayne K. Cherry, who influenced a vast number of concept and production vehicles during his time with GM, became the company’s fifth Vice President of Design (1992-2004), and has been selected to receive the distinguished EyesOn Design Lifetime Design Achievement Award for 2013.

The EyesOn Design Lifetime Design Achievement Award is presented annually by the Detroit Institute of Ophthalmology, and one of this award’s unique features is that candidates are chosen solely by vehicle designers who have previously won the award. Some of the winning and voting designers include Chris Bangle (whose most famous work was at BMW), Walter de’Silva (ditto, Volkswagen), Tom Gale (Chrysler), Giorgetto Giugiaro (Italdesign), Chuck Jordan (GM), Sergio Pininfarina (Carrozzeria Pininfarina) and Jack Telnack (Ford).

Wayne with his seven EyesOn Design awards at the 2003 North American International Auto Show.

We recently spoke with Cherry, a native of Indianapolis, Indiana, who joined the General Motors design team in 1962 after graduating from the Art Center College of Design, about his work and his career: